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*update: applications for this position are now closed; thanks everyone for the fantastic interest (we received 131 applications for this role). We will be contacting candidates very soon, with an appointment made by the end of the month.*

Are you a current or recent postgrad with an interest in museum studies? I’m hiring a research assistant for a part-time, 5 month post, assisting with the Irish Research Council – funded project Museum Survey 2015, undertaken with the Irish Museums Trust and the Irish Museum Association:

A part-time (3 days per week) Research Assistant is currently sought for the Irish Research Council-funded project ‘A Survey of Museums in Ireland’ (2015), led by Principal Investigator Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald, in partnership with the Irish Museums Trust and the Irish Museums Association. The Research Assistant will be a key part of the research team responsible for conducting and delivering the report.

The principal aim of this research project is to provide a comprehensive, up-to-date, and broad survey of the Irish museums sector and its activities (all-island). The survey will collate self-reported museum data on general information (size, location, facilities, opening hours, etc.); programmes and activities; governing authority; staffing and training; budgets, funding and development activity; collections size and scope; access and education services; and visitor data (including tourist and local/national visitors). The survey will include community, county, regional and national public museums, north and south.

Hours and location of work are flexible, but the Research Assistant will be primarily based at the premises of the Irish Museums Association (Earlsfort Terrace), working alongside the IMA’s Director of Operations Gina O’Kelly, and reporting to Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald (UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy). The schedule of work will vary over the five-month duration of the project (July – November 2015), and will be agreed with the Research Assistant in advance of commencement. The flexibility of this post, and opportunity for research and publication experience, may especially suit a current or recent postgraduate student.

Deadline is 10 July; salary is c.20k (pro-rated). Feel free to email me with any informal queries. For more details, full job description, and to apply, see http://www.ucd.ie/hr/jobvacancies/ (Ref. 007540).

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Benfactors: Sir Alfred and Lady Beit at Russborough House in 1978 with Adoration of the Shepherds, by Adriaen van Ostade, one of paintings destined for Christie’s. Photograph: Dermot O’Shea (photo & link from the Irish Times, 13 June 2015)

One of the extras accompanying Rosita Boland’s excellent piece in the Irish Times (‘Flight of the Beits’ – read it here) was a sound clip provided by my colleague Dr Philip Cottrell, working along with School alum Ciaran Woods, which was extracted from a 1985 BBC documentary where the Beits explain their intentions leaving the house and collections jointly in trust — and their clear wish that the collection remain intact. That recording (and its transcript) are linked to / provided below.

An extract of an interview (2:36) conducted with Sir Alfred Beit and Lady Beit in 1985 for a BBC documentary in which they discuss the importance of keeping Russborough and its collections intact (transcript follows below)

It was broadcast on 7 July 1985 – almost 30 years to the day before the bulk of this priceless group of old masters are due to be sold off at Christie’s London (some of which, including the Rubens, Study of a Bearded Man, are discussed at length in the documentary). The documentary was part of a series, The Great Collectors, presented by Harriet Crawley.

Presenter: From April to October, Russborough is open to the public. Clementine and Alfred Beit have no children, and they were faced with the problem: how to keep the house and the collection together?

Lady Beit: Although there are some wonderful institutions and societies in this country to do with the arts, there is nobody – no ‘body’ – which functions in the same way as the National Trust. And therefore we began to worry about the future and we felt that whatever we did about this, to whomever we left it, or what have you, that the day would come when they couldn’t possibly afford to live in it, and what happens? In this country everybody is very keen to buy land but virtually nobody wants to live, love and care for a very, very large house. And we became worried about this.

It’s not only a question of the house it was the fact that we had spent, on the whole I suppose you could say, about the last 30 years putting the collection into the house – the two made a very happy marriage and we didn’t want to disturb it, and we were nervous that something in the future might happen whereby the house would be sold, people would lap up the land, the house would go to rack and ruin, and the collection would be dispersed.

Presenter: For this reason, in 1978 a trust was set up, the Alfred Beit Foundation which today administers Russborough…

Lady Beit: …quite frankly, to buy anything up to the standard of the rest of this very, very great collection, we would need to sell a picture, and I don’t honestly think that there is a picture that we particularly want to sell.

Sir Alfred Beit: No, that’s true, we’ve done all that you see.

Lady Beit: We’ve done all that.

Sir Alfred Beit: It’s very nice when you’ve got something you want to sell which is going to fetch a decent amount of money, you can buy something of the equivalent with the proceeds, but …we’ve done the weeding out, and frankly there’s little or nothing that I would like to get rid of now however much I might like to buy something else.

Lady Beit: I think that’s a very important point: we really don’t want to sell anything. After all, the whole object of what we’ve done here at Russborough, opening to the public and that kind of thing and why we’ve done it is to try and keep the collection as it is in the house.

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There’s no question that the proposed sale of paintings from the Beit Collection at Russborough House next month at Christie’s may constitute the greatest loss of art to Ireland in this lifetime. Many in Ireland’s art history and museum community have decried the sale, the manner in which the paintings have already been exported out of the country, and the lack of proper public debate on the issue. My department (the School of Art History & Cultural Policy) last week published a letter to the Irish Times calling for the sale to be halted — and we are joined in our protest by the Irish Arts Review, Irish Museums Association, Irish Georgian Society, and An Taisce (links are all to separate appeals by each of these organisations).

Today we share details of a public press event addressing the forthcoming sale and urging immediate action:

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As part of ongoing efforts to stop the sale of paintings from the historic Beit collection, and to discuss alternative plans for funding Russborough, a press conference has been organised by the School of Art History & Cultural Policy (UCD), the Irish Georgian Society, and An Taisce.

It will take place in Tailors’ Hall, Back Lane, Dublin 8, on Wednesday, 17 June, at 3 pm. Among the speakers will be Ian Lumley (An Taisce), Dr John Loughman (UCD), Dr Michael Ryan (former Director, Chester Beatty Library), and a representative of the Irish Georgian Society.

As a result of a remarkable act of generosity, one of the greatest of all private collections of Old Master paintings, formed in England by a German entrepreneur whose fortune was made in South Africa, has come to rest in Ireland. In 1976 Sir Alfred Beit, Bart., set up the Foundation which bears his name to ensure that his collection remains in perpetuity in the magnificent setting of Russborough at the foot of the Wicklow Hills.

These are the words of Professor Christopher Brown (former Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), writing in 1984. Three years later Sir Alfred and Lady Clementine Beit decided to bequeath seventeen of the most important paintings from their collection to the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI), while the kernel of their collection (30-40 pictures) remained at Russborough. It was hoped that the NGI paintings could occasionally be exhibited, with the rest of the historic Beit collection, at Russborough.

Sadly, recent actions by the Alfred Beit Foundation (ABF) have betrayed both the legacy of the Beits’ extraordinary benevolence to their adopted country and the trust invested in the Foundation by the Irish people to care for this collection. On 9 July six magnificent paintings, including two works by Peter Paul Rubens, will be sold by the ABF at Christie’s, London. Two 19th-century British landscapes and a drawing by Francois Boucher have been consigned to other sales to be held in June and July by the same auction house. In addition, an architectural painting by Jacques de Lajoüe (1687-1761), which had hung together with its pair in the Saloon at Russborough until last year, was apparently sold to a private individual by the ABF for a reported sum of €500,000. These recent sales, or proposed sales, are the latest in the liquidation of what the ABF has called “non-core assets”. In 2006 and 2013 the ABF disposed of collections of Italian Renaissance sculpture and Chinese porcelain.

The sale of these paintings will be an immeasurable loss to the national cultural patrimony. While some of these artists are represented in the National Gallery of Ireland, most of the paintings going under the hammer are either better in quality or are of a different type to those in our national collections. The ABF’s decision will also take us further away from Sir Alfred Beit’s aim in establishing his foundation in 1976, and opening the doors of Russborough to the public two years later – to make the house and its contents a centre for the study and appreciation of the fine arts in Ireland.

It is not too late to halt the sale and to consider other models of funding for Russborough House.